The Anam Cara Fasgadh annual Remembrance Event with Butterfly Release is a unique way for families bereaved through the death of a baby, child or young person to come together in mutial understanding and empathy.
 
Join other bereaved families at Lochardil House, Stratherrick Road, Inverness, IV2 4LF, on Sat 17th August 2024 for a short service of remembrance, during which we will each release a live butterfly (or butterflies) in memory of our children.
 
Our butterflies are bred in sterile conditions by an award winning entomologist who has been supporting charities since the first butterfly release our co-founder Susan Simpson hosted in 2013. These butterflies have been loved and cared for by the team at Gribblybugs since they were eggs.
 
Your butterfly will be gently woken from their hibernation by the warmth of your loving hands and will carry the love of each bereaved family member and friend as they take to the wing.
 
Join us afterwards for refreshments.
 
 

registrations are not available

There are currently no entry options available for this event.

 

The butterflies that are bred by Tim, an award winning educationalist and entomologist in Coventry, for the releases are Painted Ladies (Vanessa cardui) which are an annual migrant, arriving in the UK every April - May from Europe and Africa. The butterflies are bred in sterile conditions to ensure they are disease free and healthy. 

The reason Tim breeds this species is that they are one of the most widespread species of butterfly, found right across the world, and do not impact the native butterflies when they are released. They are recorded as being found almost anywhere, from the seashore and town gardens, to the tops of the highest mountains in Europe & Africa.

Painted Lady has been assessed for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in 2020 and is listed as Least Concern, and is the only butterfly species ever to have been recorded from Iceland. 

The butterflies feed on a wide variety of flowers, over 300 recorded host plants, and the caterpillars feed on thistles, mallows and Viper's-bugloss, as well as a wide variety of cultivated plants. An adults life span has been observed to last from 14 to 28 days. 

After release, the female butterflies can lay anywhere from 200 to 500 eggs throughout her lifespan. It takes up to a week for the eggs to hatch, then the caterpillar stage lasts for around 10 to 14 days, then will then spin a silk chrysalis for themselves in a quiet, sheltered spot & after 7 to 10 days the adult butterfly emerges.

And so they will continue until the generation that is ready to migrate in the Autumn takes to the wing to start the journey of up to 9,000 miles to their winter grounds ~ these incredible creatures can fly for up to 12 hours a day using the sun to navigate back to Africa.

Richard Fox, Surveys Manager at Butterfly Conservation, reports, “This tiny creature weighing less than a gram with a brain the size of a pinhead and no opportunity to learn from older, experienced individuals, undertakes an epic intercontinental migration in order to find plants for its caterpillars to eat. Once thought to be blindly led, at the mercy of the wind, into an evolutionary dead-end in the lethal British winter, this amazing combination of mass-participation citizen science and cutting edge technology has shown Painted Ladies to be sophisticated travellers."